


Eyes on Me

by OmoYasha



Series: Omovember 2020 [15]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Bureaucracy, M/M, Omorashi, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27745756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OmoYasha/pseuds/OmoYasha
Summary: Omovember Day 26: Toilets with threatening aurasWith all the stories he's heard, Carlos should probably be grateful the bathroom wasn't dangerous.Instead, he just wished it wasn't STARING at him like that.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Series: Omovember 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998742
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Eyes on Me

Carlos had never been fond of public restrooms.

They tended toward the unsanitary, and furthermore, they were usually, well.

 _Public_.

Carlos was, generally speaking, a somewhat private person. And he was not exactly a fan of the concept of other people observing him pee. When he and Cecil had first moved in together, it had taken him _weeks_ to get used to his then-boyfriend’s habit of abruptly entering the bathroom to brush his teeth, wash his face, fetch something from the cabinet… with an utter disregard for who was already occupying it, or what they were currently engaged in.

While Carlos was very certain Cecil had _heard_ of knocking, in the general sense – he had used the word in conversation, so anything else seemed unlikely – it certainly did not seem to be a concept he saw any applications for in his personal life.

That was a bit of a difficult adjustment, that one.

The point was, if having an audience to your bodily functions was awkward when it was the love of your life, it was worse with strangers or near strangers in a public space, with all of you either vaguely wishing _you_ were elsewhere, or vaguely wishing the _other_ people were.

Carlos preferred a slightly higher degree of anonymity and solitude.

In the past, this was a matter of personal preference; a quirk, an amusing oddity.

Here in Night Vale, where even Cecil’s answer to inquiries on public amenities tended to be _“Don’t”,_ it was much more a matter of self-preservation.

Especially after the truly horrifying story Nilanjana had told him, shortly after their arrival, when she had gone to use the restroom of the Ralph’s with their fellow scientist Justina, and returned without her. Nilanjana, as intrepid as she usually was, had refused to leave the lab for a week, and Carlos couldn’t really blame her.

Justina never came back.

No, there were very valid reasons to avoid public restrooms in Night Vale, even if locals seemed to treat them like inconveniences akin to a poorly cleaned gas station toilet. Carlos was happy to stick to his preexisting impulse for privacy, and in the last… however long, he had lived here, he had done an excellent job of accommodating his own needs in that regard.

He’d been lucky, really.

Unlike today.

He was currently seated in a small, nondescript room somewhere in town hall, alone with a metaphorical mountain of paperwork.

He had offered to fill out all the necessary forms for their upcoming vacation, since apparently they all must be filled out on site, in one session, and he’d heard his husband mumbling about having to find a substitute for his broadcast. There were no set office hours for science; it seemed like the right thing to do, knowing how much his husband hated missing work.

Several hours in, still chipping away at the pile of forms filled with questions that he was certain Cecil could have answered easily, but he himself had not the slightest clue on, he was beginning to question his logic.

_Vibrancy of first bloodstone sacrifice?_

The current form asked. How did they expect him to answer _that_? The form didn’t even specify whether it was referring to his, Cecil’s, or their first as a couple!

After a moment of indecision, he scribbled “soothing”, hoping that was both true, and vague enough to apply to any of the intended meanings.

The thing is, this would be easier if he didn’t keep getting distracted by how badly he needed to use the bathroom.

He’s been here for hours already; the air conditioning in the building is old and weak, and his water bottle is annoyingly empty. Carlos may not be excellent at self-care in general, but he _has_ been excellent at keeping well hydrated ever since the time a month or two after moving here that he had fainted embarrassingly in the middle of studying a cactus, and later found out that Cecil had narrated the incident (with extreme drama) to the _entire community_ as if it were the most newsworthy thing to happen all week (which it emphatically was not, scientifically speaking, given that it happened on the same week as the _dinosaurs_ ). The evidence was clear: drinking enough water was of the highest importance, to a scientist living in the desert.

Unfortunately, staying well hydrated had a well-documented and extremely predictable effect on his urinary system. Even in Night Vale.

He still felt very unenthused at the concept of inquiring about the bathrooms, despite his physical discomfort, so instead he threw himself into the paperwork with renewed vigor.

Maybe the first few forms were the most difficult, and he could finish the rest and just… go home.

The next few forms were not easier. They were, in fact, exactly what one might expect based on the first. They took a long time – another hour, at least, though it was hard to tell without a functional clock.

Carlos was getting desperate.

Also, it was harder to think about the questions, the worse he needed to go.

He frowned.

Then, with great reluctance, he pulled out his phone, and (after smiling fondly at the latest text of anatomically correct heart emojis and bleeding eyes for a few moments), fired off a text to Cecil.

_What do you think the odds are that I’ll live to regret it, if I ask to use the bathroom here?_

Even though he was pretty sure it was the right time of day for Cecil to be on-air at the moment, a return text dinged his phone only a few seconds later (which made him really _really_ hope Cecil didn’t just read the message out loud in front of everybody like he sometimes does, but it was a bit too late to worry about that now).

He checked the message.

_City hall, right? I’ve used that one before – I’d say you’ve got pretty good chances, maybe XXXXX%! <3_

The number appeared to have been censored out and replaced with animal emojis and random symbols. Also, it had too many digits.

Carlos considered his options.

Cecil probably wouldn’t have sent his statement with an exclamation point and a heart if it was dangerous… would he?

His phone chimed with another text.

_Good luck, sweetie!_

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He looked at the most recent form, innocently inquiring about which type of wine, hypothetically speaking, best accompanied his own flesh. He stood up, resolved.

He’d rather risk the dangers of a Night Vale public restroom than try to fill out the piles upon piles of contradictory and repetitive paperwork _while_ his bladder felt like it was bursting.

After a quick inquiry with the receptionist about whether he was allowed to leave his paperwork and come back to it – and her affirming burble – Carlos went down the hallway, trying to repeat the directions in his mind, so as not to get lost.

Following the directions took him down a long flight of uneven stone stairs, damp and clammy with only a flickering fluorescent light to provide illumination.

The stairs went on for much longer than seemed like it should be possible. Just as Carlos was beginning to consider turning back, the staircase opened into a very, very dark hallway.

He couldn’t see anything.

But the instructions were pretty clear, weren’t they?

“Downstairs, first door on the right.”

So he followed along the wall hesitantly, feeling the way with his hand, until his fingers hit nothing but open air.

The door, maybe?

He felt a little bit further. Definitely a doorway, it seemed.

He fumbled around for the light, dancing in place slightly, and was glad when a dim yellow glow suffused the room. He looked around the bathroom, and froze.

It was a single person bathroom, so that was neat.

On the other hand, he wasn’t sure how he felt about the dozens of eyes plastered over every wall. He stepped inside.

The eyes followed him. There were even a few blinking at him from the _ceiling._ As he moved to the toilet, he could feel the weight of their stares. He moved a hand to his belt buckle, and dropped it.

There was no way he could pee like this.

He exited the bathroom, standing in the shadowy hallway with his legs pressed together as he pulled his phone out, intending to call his husband – who had supposedly used this bathroom before – if the eyes were standard, or if he’d done something wrong, skipped some vital step.

He was somehow unsurprised when his phone showed him nothing but a picture of a decomposing opossum, and block letters saying “NO RECEPTION”.

He made a face, aware that he was perilously close to leaking, and decided he didn’t have much of a choice.

He returned to the bathroom.

It was still filled with eyes.

They stared at him as he fumbled with his pants, gasping as a bit escaped to dampen his underwear. And then, pants down in front of the toilet, he closed his eyes and tried to relax, and…

…nothing.

They were still _looking at him._

Moaning, Carlos tried to think of anything he could think of to make it work. He flicked the lights off and back on, to no effect. He recited a list of his favorite numbers in his head. He tried to imagine them not as eyes, but as blinking lights on a large, scientific device.

None of it helped.

They were still _eyes._

And they were still _watching him_.

Finally, frustrated, he muttered – more to himself than anything, really,

“Could you please stop _looking_ at me like that?”

There was a pause.

One by one, the eyes blinked closed and disappeared.

Huh.

…it was still the most uncomfortable pee of Carlos’s life.

He was delighted when, shortly after he made his way back to the room, Cecil strolled in to rescue him from paperwork purgatory.

“I thought it might go quicker with both of us, now that I’m off work.” he explained after the hug and greeting, and Carlos almost melted at the thoughtfulness.

Sure enough, Cecil seemed far more confident – if no less bored – about the forms than Carlos himself felt, and they managed to work through the rest of the stack in _relatively_ short order, working mostly in silence apart from the occasional request for information.

It wasn’t until they were walking home that Cecil turned to Carlos suddenly and said,

“Oh! I forgot to ask – how did it go in the bathroom?”

“I don’t really want to talk about that, bunny.” Carlos responded automatically, and then, almost immediately, reconsidered. Honestly, now that it was over – and he didn’t plan to repeat the experience any time soon – he couldn’t help but be a little curious.

“I suppose I am curious though – how are you _supposed_ to deal with the eyes?”

Cecil stopped. Tilted his head, looking at Carlos with bemused humor.

“…eyes?”

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this picture: https://omoyasha.tumblr.com/post/634633549670187008/is-it-just-me-or-does-this-toilet-have-major-wtnv  
> And a subsequent request on my tumblr. :)


End file.
